Today is the big day. Crucible Station is free on Kindle from now until the 3rd. Make sure you grab your copy while it’s free.

This book is not my usual style. My favorite thing to write is ghost stories, and I intend to keep that my primary genre from now on. However, every now and then, a writer gets a plot bunny nipping at their heels and they simply can’t ignore it. That’s what happened with Crucible Station.

I have written dystopian once before, when I wrote my novella Winter. I also enjoy reading tales like Hunger Games and Stephen King’s Running Man as well as his The Long Walk. When I got the plot bunny for Crucible Station, I could not get it out of my head. So, I wrote a book.

CS is not as grim as my Winter. Like many of my plots, there’s a great deal of hope running throughout. It also draws heavily on my experiences working with displaced children in a therapeutic residential setting. Most of the kiddos I worked with had issues with violence–and with the abuse they had suffered, it was perfectly understandable. When CS’s main character, Marj, is taken from her family and put in a government home, I used my own experiences to add a touch realism to the tale. However, that does not mean The Home in my story is a replica of where I worked.

Now, I’m happy to get back to work on Ghost on the Downs, and looking forward to beginning the first of the Ghost Chaser’s series, The Man with the Ax. It’s going to be big fun.

There’s only one way to escape the city

Life in New Liberty is tough, but it’s the only life Marjoram has ever known. At fourteen, she lives with her parents and wears a breathing mask to survive the polluted city streets on the way to school. Crucible Station offers a better life to any citizen smart enough to receive an invitation, but Marj won’t leave her family. When she is thrown into a detestable government home because her family can’t feed her, Crucible Station is the only way out–if she is clever enough to pass The Trials.